Thursday, March 01, 2007

Thanks for a great first OpenCoffee Club

Wow. Thanks to everyone who turned up today for London's first OpenCoffee Club - our friends at Starbucks were overwhelmed when more than 75 of you turned up. They told me they sold 6x more drinks this Thursday morning than usual, so we expect the red carpet treatment next week :)

If you missed it, no worries, its on at the same time and same place next week - 10-12 in Starbucks inside Esprit, which is at 178-182 Regent St - just sign up at Meetup or come along.

It was so cool to see such an diverse mix of entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, investors (VC and angel) and media all in the same informal space - not pitching, just sharing ideas.

There were some really promising entrepreneurs and businesses. Hopefully people made some good connections. I really hope that we can keep up the open atmosphere and help one another improve our businesses - feedback is so important, and in an informal setting can be even more powerful.

One of the coolest things for me was meeting Clementine and Rebecca, two 23 year-old entrepreneurs who had built their online business on less than a shoe-string and were just clearly really excited about what they were building.

"There seems to be a real buzz around these type of events now. A lot of us now know each other and everyone's moving forward and getting real traction." (Peter, entrepreneur & developer)

"Great atmosphere and some great people. I got way more out of it than I thought I would - and that isn’t meant to sound like I went in with low expectations. I didn’t. I’m looking forward to the next one." (Nic, VC)

Saul, thanks for a really good event! The buzz was great and I sure there were some excellent connections made! I have just posted a blog about it on our Make Your Mark Connect site - check it out!www.makeyourmarkconnect.org

Dublin OpenCoffee Club went very well, but it was nothing as big as London. I wrote a short follow-up about it over at my blog: http://www.eoghanmccabe.com/naive-by-design/first-dublin-opencoffee-club-a-great-success/